It didn’t take long for the first six minutes to belong to Paris Royal.

Their midfield trio, pressed SC Valois into their own half with the coordinated efficiency of a machine. It had obviously been rehearsed.

Their left center-back, exactly as Henri had identified, stepped forward aggressively to cut the central lane every time SC Valois tried to build through the middle. Their holding midfielder, a 28-year-old Spaniard named Varela, tracked every pass into Luc’s feet before the ball had even left Hugo’s boot.

Varela was good. Better than suggested.

He didn’t just press like he was chasing the ball. He pressed like the person he was chasing just slept with his wife.

Minute seven.

SC Valois won the ball back high up the pitch. Mateo intercepting a Varela pass that was slightly overhit, the only loose ball the Spaniard had given away in seven minutes.

Mateo played it immediately to Hugo on the half-turn.

Paris Royal’s press focused inward at once, their two midfielders converging on Hugo from different angles.

Hugo didn’t take a second touch. He played it blind, first time, into the channel behind the left center-back’s step, the exact pocket Henri had drawn on the whiteboard.

Luc was already off and running.

He had started the diagonal run before Hugo received the ball, reading the left center-back’s weight distribution from twenty yards and knowing the step was coming before the step happened.

The Blind Side Run Timing was functioning as advertised.

He arrived onto the ball at full stride, thirty-two yards from goal, Paris Royal’s left fullback scrambling across to cover. Their center-back was already three yards out of his defensive line.

The fullback made the tackle... but Luc had already played it. Auded by the acceleration burst.

One touch, outside of his right boot, back inside to Idriss who had just arrived from the blind side of the right center-back as his eyes were on Luc.

Idriss was inside the penalty area with the ball at his feet and the right center-back now standing between him and the goalkeeper.

He cut inside from his left to his right to floor the center-back. Confident play.

The keeper came.

He didn’t rush it. He let the keeper commit his weight to the near side and then passed it to the far post with his right foot. Low and calm.

GOAL.

1-0.

Parc des Royals went silent.

Something completely unexpected had just happened. Sixty-one thousand people who had been informed, by a single goal, that the script they had brought to the stadium was wrong.

Idriss ran to the corner flag and slid on his knees, screaming at the away end where three thousand SC Valois supporters had just become the loudest people in Paris.

Luc jogged to him, gripped the back of his shirt.

"Now we hold it together," Luc said. "They’re going to come at us."

"Let them come."

---

Paris Royal came.

Minute eleven. Fontaine received the ball centrally for the first time, with his back to goal, Hadj pressed him immediately.

Fontaine spun off the press with a single movement that cost no energy and created four yards of space. He played it wide right to his winger before Hadj could reach him.

The winger cut inside Owusu. The cross was floated high and had real pace, into the six-yard box.

Blažek came and collected it with both hands, his biggest clean catch of the match so far. He held it tight and brought it into his chest.

Luc glanced across at Fontaine on the jog back to his position.

Fontaine’s face was as clean as it had been in the tunnel. Not angry. Not panicky. Patient.

A man who knew that one goal wasn’t really anything.

That patience was the most dangerous thing about him at the moment.

[System Notification]

[Fontaine Observation: He’s not pressing for the equalizer. He’s letting his midfield build the pressure and waiting for the right pocket of space to appear. He will arrive at the goal rather than chase it.]

[This is the reset version. Treat him accordingly.]

"I know."

---

Minute seventeen.

Paris Royal built from the back through Varela. Seven passes in a controlled sequence across the width of the pitch, deliberately shifting SC Valois’s defensive shape left to right and right to left, waiting for the gap that defensive tracking always eventually produced.

The gap appeared between Demirci and Mateo.

Varela played it through the gap without hesitation.

Their attacking midfielder, a Brazilian named Santos, arrived into the pocket on the half-turn. He took it on his first touch, spun, and drove at Ekberg.

Ekberg backed off, correctly, giving himself angles to cut the shooting lane.

Santos faked the shot. Ekberg didn’t fully bite, but his recovery was a tad bit slow.

Santos drove the ball low across the face of the goal.

Fontaine was arriving from behind Hadj. Not sprinting. Moving at controlled pace but faster than Hadj’s run, his run had already been calculated before the ball had left Santos’s foot.

He arrived onto it first time.

Tap-in. Six yards and into the empty net.

1-1.

The stadium exploded with noise.

The thousands of home fans finding their voices all at once, the sound compressing against the stands and bouncing back down onto the pitch.

Fontaine turned and found the camera behind the goal. He raised his left arm and tapped his right index finger on his bare wrist.

Tick-tock.

The original celebration. Given back. In front of his own crowd. Against the man who had invented the challenge.

The crowd imitated.

Tick. Tock.

Tick. Tock.

Luc watched it from forty yards out.

Unmoved.

"His turn," Luc thought. "Now it’s mine again."

---

Minute twenty-four.

Paris Royal were in full rhythm now. Varela was dictating the tempo of the match from deep, their two other midfielders moving in rotations that Mateo couldn’t pin down without abandoning his own defensive shape.

SC Valois were chasing shadows in their own half.

Hugo managed to pick up the ball near the left of the center circle and drove forward with it. Two Paris Royal midfielders converged.

He found Luc dropping short, twenty-five yards from goal.

[System Notification]

[First Touch Under Pressure — Active]

The ball arrived to Luc’s feet with two men closing him. He killed it with the outside of his left boot, the touch dropping the ball perfectly at his feet, both pressing midfielders arriving a half-second behind the touch.

Luc turned. The space between the midfield lines was there for about two seconds.

He played it left to Dário, who was making an overlapping run behind Paris Royal’s right fullback.

Dário crossed it early.

The cross was too long. It ran out for a goal kick.

But the pattern was correct. It atleast showed that SC Valois could create in this match.

---

Minute thirty-one.

Paris Royal won a free kick twenty-five yards out. The Paris 19-year-old winger (from all those matches ago) stepped over it. The wall was set.

Hugo was at the end of the wall.

The kick went over the wall, bending away from Blažek’s dive, clipping the underside of the crossbar and bouncing down.

Blažek, on the deck from the dive, scrambled back. The ball had crossed the line before his glove reached it.

2-1.

Henri’s hands went to his head on the touchline.

The stadium noise reached a different level this time. The roar of a crowd that believed its team was back in control.

---

Minute thirty-eight.

Paris Royal scored a third.

It was a counter-attack after Mateo had pressed too high on a Valois corner that was cleared out. The ball broke to Santos twenty yards inside the Valois half, most SC Valois players caught upfield.

Four passes. Twelve seconds. Fontaine arriving at the far post with a composed late diagonal run that Luc had identified as his signature.

He didn’t miss from there.

3-1.

The away end went quiet.

The noise dropped to something more personal, pockets of shouting rather than a unified wall of sound.

Luc stood as Paris Royal celebrated around him.

He looked at the scoreboard.

3-1. Minute thirty-nine.

Six minutes until halftime.

He turned and found Mateo jogging toward him, his face carrying a lot of weight.

"Hold the line until the whistle," Mateo said.

"No," Luc said flatly. "We go again. Right now."

Mateo looked at him.

"Hugo. Tell him we go wide immediately after the kickoff. Idriss stays high. We get one back before the whistle."

"Luc--"

"No. We still have six fucking minutes." Luc was already moving. "That’s enough. C’mon guys!"

---

Minute forty-two.

SC Valois kicked off.

Mateo played it straight to Hugo, who had already started his run wide right.

Hugo drove the ball to the byline, forcing Paris Royal’s left fullback into a defensive sprint. The fullback was fresh and got there.

He cleared it.

The ball dropped to Luc.

One touch to set. His right foot.

He drove it first time, hard and low.

The keeper had it covered but the deflection off a Paris Royal center-back’s shin changed the angle at the last instant.

The ball struck the post.

It bounced back into play. Idriss arrived fastest.

His header from eight yards was palmed over the bar by the keeper diving back from across the post.

Corner kick.

The halftime whistle blew before SC Valois could take it.

Piii.

3-1 at the break.

---

The away dressing room.

Henri came in, looked at his players, and put the marker down on the ledge of the whiteboard without drawing anything.

"We’re still in this," he said.

Mateo pulled the captain’s armband tighter on his bicep.

Hugo was already rolling the recovered ankle, testing the joint, making sure the first half hadn’t cost him anything he couldn’t afford.

Idriss sat with his forearms on his knees, completely still.

Luc stood against the wall with his arms crossed, looking at the floor directly in front of his boots.

Two goal deficit. Forty-five minutes left.

Against Paris Royal. In Paris Royal’s stadium. With thousands of people already counting down to the final whistle.

Luc had scored at Nantaise from outside the box when nobody believed he could. He had scored a cup hat-trick too. He had made a goalkeeper of Phocéen’s quality look like he wasn’t ready.

He had consumables in his pocket and a 100% guaranteed goal still uncashed.

"We go again," Luc said to the room.

Nobody argued.